


find a truth and tell it

by lovebeyondmeasure



Series: The Gerys-Da Esoterica Chronicles [3]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Cat Shanker (Cormoran Strike), Gen, Tarot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 04:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17257742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovebeyondmeasure/pseuds/lovebeyondmeasure
Summary: “It’s for you,” she said. “I was confused, but these cards- this reading is for you.” She looked back down, studying them with fresh intensity, unaware of the jolt that had gone down his spine at the electricity of her eye contact.For him?I don’t believe in this sort of thing,he told himself.Divination has never been proven to be reliable or accurate.He leaned a bit closer, all the same.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this work sitting in my drafts for a while now, so I decided, what the heck, I'll post it now. We can all find out where it takes us. And it's such a pleasure to return to the world of the Gerys-Da! 
> 
> If you haven't read the previous two works, go do that now, then come back. This is set in the nebulous future that comes after; timelines? I don't know her. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Robin stood behind the counter, staring into space, her hands mindlessly shuffling the deck over and over. Her motions were smooth, practiced; this was deep in her muscle memory.

The bell over the door jingled, announcing Cormoran’s return. Startled, Robin’s hands missed, dropping two cards onto the counter-top.

“How did it go?” she asked, setting down the deck.

“Fine. First shipment should arrive next Wednesday,” he said, coming up to the counter. “I didn’t know you used tarot. You certainly don’t seem the type-”

Cormoran stopped, slightly embarrassed. There was a lot of prejudice against certain magical practices, especially the ones used by the Rromani people and Travelers. Growing up, he had seen many types of magic user, and many types of magic; he’d learned better than to trust those kinds of stereotypes. Anything could be used to focus magic; it wasn’t about the tools so much as it was about the magician.

“It’s alright,” Robin said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I know it’s not the done thing these days. I’ve just had this deck for a long time, and sometimes it’s helpful in unexpected ways.”

The deck had a well-loved look to it, the edges softened, the glossiness worn to a smooth shine by years of handling. The cards on the counter-top stared up at him; the artwork was unfamiliar, not the classic, primary-colored deck at all, but a fluid, soft watercolor palette. 

“Queen of Cups,” Cormoran read from the one facing him. “What’s she represent?”

He felt bad for his judgmental comment, and sought to cover it up by feigning interest. 

“Water of water,” Robin said in a soft voice, reciting as if from memory. “The devoted queen is gentle but determined, and takes care of her loved ones. She’s inverted to me, though. Hm.”

He didn’t know what that might mean, but from the furrow of her brow, it wasn’t what she wanted. “And this one?” He tapped the other, upside-down to him. 

“Adjustment,” she said. “Though most decks have it as Justice. See, she has the scales and the sword? She’s not blindfolded in my deck, though. It’s because she’s very ruthless.  _ The sharpness of her sword judges right and wrong.  _ She symbolizes Libra.”

“Libra?” he asked. Something stirred in the roiling cauldron of his memory. “Aren’t you a Libra?”

The tips of her ears pinked up. “Yes, but it’s not relevant to this reading,” she said. “I don’t think.”

“Anything I should be aware of?” he asked, joking, but her eyes snapped up to meet his immediately.

“It’s for you,” she said. “I was confused, but these cards- this reading is for you.” She looked back down, studying them with fresh intensity, unaware of the jolt that had gone down his spine at the electricity of her eye contact.

For him?  _ I don’t believe in this sort of thing,  _ he told himself.  _ Divination has never been proven to be reliable or accurate.  _

He leaned a bit closer, all the same. What could it hurt to listen? Besides, Robin clearly took it at least semi-seriously.

“I need you to draw another card,” she said finally. “Here.” She fanned the deck for him, so neatly he almost asked if she did ordinary card tricks as well.

“Uh,” he said, and reached out at random to tug one from the deck. “How’s this?”

“Lay it down on the counter,” she instructed, “however feels most correct to you. Don’t think too hard. Just lay it down.”

Without looking, he placed it face-up, upright to him. Moving his hand, he was dismayed to see what it was.

“The Lovers,” Robin said. “Interesting. Gemini, balance,  _ philia.”  _

“Brotherly love,” he translated, relieved beyond measure to hear those words and to see that the card had no naked Adam and Eve, but instead a fluid rendering of two birds, an egg with a snake wrapped about it, and some other symbolism entirely void of genitals. 

“Queen of Cups, inverted Adjustment, the Lovers. Don’t go making any rash judgments in the near future,” she said. “Keep an open mind. You’re going to have to make a hard decision, and you have to flow with it, not fight against it. The Queen of Cups is gentle but determined; you have to follow her lead. If you have any dreams, heed them.”

Cormoran silently nodded. Robin’s mouth twisted slightly.

“Inverted Adjustment is worrisome, but like I said, don’t make hasty decisions. She’s very black-and-white, very by-the-book. The law is the law, but the law is sometimes wrong. She’s all about balance, but sometimes equal isn’t fair. Don’t be fooled. Which leads to the Lovers.”

He stared at the card, finding new symbolism every second: twins, sun and moon, water and fire.

“Again, this card is about balance. It’s the dividing sword that also multiplies. Balances between-” she huffed. “I think it’s between inner and outer. Your inner self will want something that goes against your outer self, or maybe vice-versa. You have to find a way to equalize the two forces.”

Robin shook her head, gathering up the cards. “Of course, none of this is an exact science. But, well. I’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s never been harmful, anyway.”

“Thanks for the reading,” Cormoran said, biting back the urge to ask her to read his palm next. She was blushing, clearly embarrassed, probably because this was so counter to the work she’d been learning from him. 

“How’d you end up with a deck?” he asked, hoping to diffuse her tension. “That’s not the traditional artwork.”

“No, it’s not,” Robin said, shuffling the deck once more, resettling it in a slim wooden case. “I bought it at a traveling carnival back when I was in school.”

“Really?” he asked, surprised. He wouldn’t have pegged Robin to have been one of the girls who took up with the mystical arts, though many girls in a certain age range tended to everywhere he’d ever lived. 

“It’s actually kind of a funny story,” she said, moving to put the wooden case back in her bag. “Well, I don’t know if it’s funny. But we were walking down the shop-tents, me and Matthew, I mean, and he was making fun of the whole thing, you know, divination and traveler-magic and all that. And for some reason, it made me mad,” she said, smiling. “And it was almost out of spite, but I went right up to this stall, and the lady at the stall said,  _ oh, you’re here for a deck,  _ and I put my hand right out and picked this one up. It was like it called to me.”

He could almost see it; and certainly Robin did have a strong-headed will in her, if you got her at the right moment. 

“So I bought it, and started to play with it, you know, not very seriously. My brothers and I even learned a few card games with it. But over time, it just…. I don’t know. I don’t do a lot of proper readings or anything. But sometimes the cards just have something to say, and what’s the harm in listening?”

Cormoran nodded. “I’ve never been a believer,” he said, still leaning on the counter. “But I’ve never been a disbeliever, either. For all we know, it might be true. Who am I to say?”

She gave him an impossibly grateful look. “Exactly. Yes.”

The bell over the door jingled again, and a young woman with frizzy reddish-brown hair up in a bun and enormous coke-bottle glasses peered inside.

“Hello? I was told to come here to order some of Waldegrave’s All-Purpose Dragon Grease?”

Robin patted him on the arm as she went past. “You go sit down, I’ll take care of this. Hello! You’re in the right place, we have a shipment coming in tomorrow. Do you need it for anything specific?”

Ad the young woman began to immediately pour out what seemed like her entire life’s story to a nodding Robin, Cormoran took her advice and went around to the back, where no one would be able to see him put his leg up. 

_ Maybe I should go poultice the stump,  _ he thought. That would give him a chance to mull over the tarot reading, as well. Not that he believed in it, of course. But it had been oddly specific, and merited further consideration.

_ After all,  _ he thought again as he entered the green-room,  _ it can’t hurt.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Robin's deck is actually the deck I received as a gift, [the Zillich Tarot](https://www.usgamesinc.com/Zillich-Tarot.html). Here's what the [Queen of Cups](https://www.usgamesinc.com/images/product/ZT78_7.jpg), [Adjustment](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-sjtdec3ql9/images/stencil/500x659/products/2316/2574/zillichcards__69965.1526852258.jpg?c=2), and [ the Lovers](https://www.tarotshop.se/content/images/cards/9781572819245/9781572819245_5.jpg) look like.


	2. the following weekend

It was Cormoran’s turn to run the booth at the open-air market. Robin had signed them up for it two months ago, and they traded off; it was only for five or six hours on Saturday mornings, twice a month, and it did bring in business. So he buttoned his lip and did it.

He usually brought Shanker along, leaving Robin to mind the shop, since Shanker’s antics and, the pun was unavoidable, his _cat-calling_ did plenty to lure people over. Plenty of magicians had feline familiars, but not ever familiar chose to undergo the spell treatments it took to allow them to talk. 

Of course, most magician’s familiars hadn’t been born human. So there was that.

The point was, it was Saturday, he was at the market, and he was dying for a drink. It didn’t even have to be beer. He would settle for one of those terrible “kombucha” drinks Robin left in the fridge. But he’d forgotten the cooler with his lunch and beverages, and while Shanker could mosey off to find one of the water-dishes stores put out for animal clientele, Cormoran was more limited in his options. 

“I’m going to pass out,” he said finally. “Shanks, stay here, tell anyone who’s curious to come back in a bit. I’m going to go get something to eat.”

“Bring me something!” Shanker said, stretching out luxuriously atop the pile of fabric shopping bags they gave out. “Beef!”

“You have a one-track mind,” Cormoran muttered as he edged out from behind the table.

“I’d settle for pork!” Shanker called after him. Cormoran just snorted and carried on. His nose carried him to the end of the aisle, where some enterprising food trucks had lined up. Choosing his lunch by the expeditious method of finding the truck with the shortest line, Cormoran ordered two hamburgers and two bottles of cola, then sighed and asked if they’d sell him some raw hamburger meat.

The blank stare of the young woman taking his money brought a scowl to his face. 

“It’s for my familiar,” he said, and she nodded immediately.

“We do familiar-food, sure. Just had to make sure it was for consumption.” She gave him his total, he paid her, and when to stand in some shade to wait for his order.

Wandering away slightly, Cormoran idly browsed a jewelry booth whose late-middle-aged owner was having an animated discussion about the relative benefits of various gemstones with her neighbor in the next stand, and was therefore not trying to sell anything to _him._ There was a necklace that reminded him, somehow, of Robin; after staring at it for a long moment, he realized why. It was a gold circle, with an eight-pointed star inside, and inside the star was a circular cabochon of malachite. Something about the stone’s undulating waves of green caught and held your eyes; malachite wasn’t the strongest stone, but it was ideal for protective spells. It was the star, though, that was the hook. 

When he and Robin were discussing some of the Hindu-inspired magic she had developed, she’d explained why there were often eight gestures to her spells. 

“Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth, and she has eight manifestations. They’re very important, because it’s not just money, you see, it’s things like knowledge, family, patience. So eight is a sacred number, because of that. There’s one gesture that invokes her specifically, even,” she’d said, demonstrating. “On paper, it’s represented by two overlapping squares, forming an octagram. So with your hands, it’s like this.”

She’d made her palms flat, thumbs extended at square angles, and made a rectangle with one palm forward, one back; then twisted them, switching which palm faced outward, creating a rectangle in another direction, one finger and thumb staying in contact the whole time.

“So it’s like the eight-pointed star. It helps to charge the spell, in my experience…”

He shook his head. The eight-pointed star in the necklace glittered up at him, the malachite glistening smoothly. 

“How much for this one?” he asked the proprietress, interrupting her conversation. She stepped over to him immediately, sensing a sale.

“Which?” the woman asked, assessing him with sharp blue eyes. 

“This one, with the star,” he said, reaching to turn it towards her.

“Oh, fine piece, that is,” she said. “For you, mm, fifty pounds.”

Cormoran blanched. That was more than a bit dear for him, even with the shop doing so much better. 

“I’ll do twenty-five, and recharge your anti-theft charms in the bargain,” he said. He wasn’t willing to go above thirty-five, but she didn’t need to know that. 

“Oh, will you now?” she said, arching an eyebrow. “How kind of ye. Forty-five.”

“Thirty, and I’ll do you a new cooling charm, that one’s all gone to shit,” he offered back.

“Forty, and Melly here will throw in a deck of tarot if you do hers as well,” the offer came, and Cormoran surprised himself by accepting it. He wouldn’t’ve thought that a tarot deck would sway him, but. Well. If Robin found them useful, he might could see giving it a try of his own. Just to see.

“Let me pick up my lunch, and I’ll come back in a mo,” he said, hearing his name being called. Well, they were calling for Cameron, but he had a feeling about it. 

“I’ll wrap the necklace up for you,” she said, tying back her curly red hair. “It’s for a gift?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Birthday.”

“She’s a lucky one,” the woman said. “It’s a lovely piece. I’ll make it pretty for her.”

“Thanks,” Cormoran said, going to pick up his lunch. The girl handed him a cool foil-wrapped package of meat as well, and he know he ought to be getting back to his stall. Shanker couldn’t hold things down forever. 

“There you are, dear, and just pick out which deck you’ll be wanting,” the proprietress told him. “Melly’ll throw it right in the bag while you do the charms.”

Right. He set down bag with the takeaway box on the ground and unsheathed his wand from its special pocket. 

“Who did the cooling charms last?” he asked as he mentally worked his way through them. They were old and tattered, barely a breeze.

“My nephew,” neighbor Melly said. “Sweet boy. He’s starting uni in the fall.”

“Hm. Hope it’s not for charms,” Cormoran said, grimacing. With a few sharp gestures and a yank, the cooling charm came free of its anchor, and he let it shred away into the air, well away from the merchandise. No need to contaminate it now. He carefully moved his wand through motions he’d made a hundred-odd times before, letting the old familiarity guide the charm to settle into the same anchor the nephew had used: the willow-wood crates holding merchandise under the tables. Willow-wood was perfect for this sort of thing.

He repeated the process with Melly’s table, feeling the magic in the air getting thin. Oh well, he sighed. Just have to tap into the reserve a little. Then he felt a slight magical nudge; the jewelry-stand owner had a hand extended.

“Bless you, boyo, I haven’t got enough to mean much to me, but go ahead for this,” she said. “Rather have them done right and tight the first time.”

Cormoran nodded, accepting her help, feeling some extra power flow into and through him. The anti-theft charms were much easier, since he didn’t have to rebuild them, just repair what time and use had weakened. Again, the women had identical charms; _did they always go to the same shops?_ he wondered as he directed the magic to fill up the empty spaces and harden what was worn away.

Thanks to the boost, he didn’t need to use much of his own reserves to do a smart job of it. The charms, hung on the corners of the tent-poles, glowed brightly to his internal magical sense, and he felt an answering glow of satisfaction. He didn’t do enough hands-on magic anymore, Cormoran decided, resheathing his wand.

“There you are, ladies,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

“No, thank you,” Melly said, her teeth gleaming against her dark skin. “This is a wonderful bargain, I feel cooler already. Which deck would you like? I must say, I wouldn’t have expected you to go for one.”

“I always know, dear,” the red-headed woman said, and from the look they exchanged, and a glimpse of a left-hand shine, Cormoran had a sudden realization about the nature of their relationship. Ah. Right. 

“Do you have the classic deck? You know, with the...” he trailed off, feeling the need to get back to his own stand and eat his lunch keenly now that he’d expended magical energy as well as physical. He cracked one of the bottles of cola and took a deep swig. 

“The Rider-Waite. D’you know, I often steer people away from that, but it does feel right for you,” Melly said, pulling out a tin with a sun on it. “There you are, then.”

“Come back any time!” her wife said. “Pleasure doing business with you!”

“And with you. Come by sometime,” he said, for once remembering to promote his own business. “Gerys-Da Esoterica, supplies and more. Here’s my card.”

“Oh, la, Melly, he’s got a card!”

“Hush, Janey, for once in your life,” Melly said, waving a hand. “Have a good day. We’ll be seeing you again.”

She said this with a tone of such certainty that Cormoran only nodded and took his things and went. Shanker, spotting him from his perch atop the tallest crate, meowed loudly.

“You left me forever, you’d better have something to show for it!” he said when Cormoran got closer. “It’s been terrible.”

“What, have you had to turn away hordes of eager customers?” Cormoran asked, manouvering his way back behind the table.

“No,” Shanker said, inspecting the bag of food. “It was boring and I couldn’t leave.”

Cormoran rolled his eyes as he fished out the foil-wrapped package from the bag. “Well, you can shut up,” he began, but Shanker was there in a flash.

“Beef,” he purred, hard enough to nearly shake the table. “Beeeeeef...”

Cormoran set the foil on the ground, so Shanker could shove his face in it without making a fool of himself in front of every passers-by. 

Eating the first hamburger in what felt like three bites, Cormoran thought about the necklace in its pretty wrapping. Janey the proprietress had clearly assumed he was buying it for a… romantic partner, and he had not done a thing to disabuse her of this notion. That didn’t mean anything, of course. It was just simpler to allow her to assume than to try to explain why he was buying his employee a piece of jewelry for her birthday, which wasn’t for several months. That was all. 

He finished the first bottle of cola and started in on the second hamburger. And as for the tarot deck…. it wouldn’t hurt anything just to have it. 

_And so what if it might bring you and Robin closer together,_ a soft voice inside him whispered. _That’s hardly a crime._

The sounds of furious chewing beneath the table stopped suddenly. “Bunsen, you’ve been doing magic,” Shanker said accusingly.

“Took you long enough to notice,” Cormoran replied, cracking open the second bottle of cola. The sugar in it would be a good boost for him, even if what he really wanted was a good pint of Doom Bar. 

The cat was now sniffing him, looking for hints as to what had happened. “You’ve exhausted yourself, you tosser,” he said, disapproving. “There you are, then.”

There was a sudden warmth in Cormoran’s chest as the cat channeled magic back into him, so fast and pure it was nearly overwhelming. 

“Oh, Christ,” he gasped, feeling refreshed on a bone-deep level. He wiggled his fingers, feeling as though they ought to leave trails of magic in the air. “Thanks.”

“Tch,” Shanker said. “It’s what a familiar’s for.”

Cormoran nudged him gently with his foot, resolving to get more beef in the future. Maybe even some pork.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Robin's necklace inspired by [this one,](http://www.alexandraalberta.com/product/chelsea-malachite-necklace/) which is wildly pricier than the one Cormoran buys from Melly. The eight-fold blessings of Lakshmi are real.
> 
> [The Rider-Waite deck](https://www.usgamesinc.com/Rider-Waite-Tarot-Card-Deck.html) is probably what you picture when someone says "tarot cards." Cormoran's a man who appreciates the classics.
> 
> I do intend for there to be at least one more chapter, but life happens a lot, so don't hold your breath waiting for it. Do watch this space, though! (And if you have any ideas for where this might be going, drop me a line!)


End file.
